Music Video Research #3

Today me and my group got hold of 'Dancing in the Distraction Industry : Music, Television and Popular Culture' by Andrew Goodwin. Because of time the restriction that we want to finish planning and filming before the holiday is over we were forced to skim read and make quick annotations, this is what we got:

There are many different descriptions of music videos, some examples are:

-Mercer looks at them as a kind of cinematic genre
-Fry and Fry look at them in terms of Adverts
-Fiske as a new form of Television as classic postmodern texts
-Walker sees them as visual art
-Lewis sees them merely in terms of shopping mall culture
-Marcus views them as semiotic pornography

Because of all of these descriptions it is very difficult for critics to fairly review them, an example is MTV, MTV has been criticised for this generations youth's short attention span and obsession with image, however it has also allowed black artists, like Michael Jackson to gain International Fans.

Music videos also give artists a chance to create a 'star persona'. An example of someone who gained great success from her star persona as a sex symbol is Madonna, of course now she has changed her star persona to a role model of female power due to her age and lack of ability to pull off her previous star persona. Also with the process of Meta-narrative, every promotional video released by an artist builds up a character that the public recognise and associate with that artist, again Madonna is a good example as well as Kylie Minougue's transformation from a frizzy-haired soap star to a sex icon.

This book is a great secondary source for our research because it explores a range of vital view points on music videos. However it is restricted for us because it is set at Degree level media students which makes it a little hard to follow.